


Christmas Covenants

by MachaSWicket



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: "dark waters" spoilers, F/M, holiday fic, spoilers - season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 23:44:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5517527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MachaSWicket/pseuds/MachaSWicket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SUMMARY:  This is not how Felicity expected that she and Oliver would spend their first holiday season together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Christmas Covenants

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE: Happy holidays – please accept this humble fic as a token of my appreciation for all of you lovely people who have chosen to follow my blog and/or read my fic. <3

 

Felicity drifts awake, the familiar dull throb of pain resurfacing from the glaze of her pain meds. Gunshots and surgery. Right.

“Felicity?” Oliver murmurs. He’s close by –- of course he’s close by. He’s spent the last couple weeks (or at least what she can remember of them) almost entirely by her side.

She blinks her eyes open in the dimly lit room, resituating herself. Rehab hospital, she recalls, her gaze skimming across the day’s schedule for PT and OT and doctor’s visits on the white board. She’s at the rehab hospital. It’s day five here. Or maybe six? Early evening, probably, since it’s dark but she doesn’t remember being awoken for dinner. 

She shakes off the last of her confusion and turns her head on the pillow, drinking him in. “Hey,” she answers, evaluating him. 

Oliver looks less and less bedraggled every day – he’s back to shaving regularly (or _trimming_  -– whatever razor-related magic he performs to keep his stubble all hot and scruffy), and although he steadfastly refuses to sleep at home, at least the rehab hospital has an actual cot for him to use, so he’s getting more sleep. Still, there are circles beneath his eyes and tension in his frame and those worry lines in his forehead are stubbornly persistent.

The TV mounted on the wall is off, which is unusual -– he typically turns on the news or ESPN while she naps. Anything to pass the time, because she sleeps _a lot_. Recovery from near-death and multiple surgeries, while grinding through a steady schedule of physical and occupational therapy is, it turns out,  _exhausting_. 

She opens her mouth to ask how he’s feeling, but her mouth is dry and gross. She hates sleeping on her back. She isn’t good at it (even with the heavy duty meds she’s on), and it leaves her disoriented and dry-mouthed and with low level back aches. She wrinkles her nose and he leans out of her field of vision for just a moment, then slips his hand beneath her head to help her reach the straw. She takes a long, quenching drink of water from the plastic cup he’s holding, then lets out a happy sigh.

“Need anything else?” he asks, moving the cup of water back to the rolling bedside table. 

“No,” she answers. But she _does_ need things –- they’re just things he can’t get for her, like more energy and stamina and strength so she can continue improving and _go home_  soon. She misses home. She misses sleeping in a bed without rails. She misses sleeping in a bed _with Oliver_.

Shifting slightly, she winces when it catches the still-healing incision points wrong. She _also_ misses days without the dull, steady ache of tissue knitting itself back together, with the occasional sharp warning jabs of breath-stealing pain; she misses that _badly_.

Oliver curls her hand in his, pressing soft kisses to her knuckles. “How’s the pain?” His chair squeaks across the tiled floor as he moves closer.

She’s confused, because the ache in her back and the tug and pull of the healing incisions on her torso are creeping closer and burning hotter, which doesn’t usually happen until late in the evening. “Okay,” she answers. It’s only then that she notices there’s an untouched tray of food on her bedside table. She frowns. “What time is it.”

He checks his watch. “Nearly midnight,” he answers. “Guess PT wore you out today.”

Stunned, Felicity stares at him. “I slept for six hours?” She hasn’t slept away that much of her day at a stretch since she was transferred from Starling General to the rehab hospital. Her stomach clenches with regret and not a little bit of worry -– is this a setback? Is she going to have to ease off the actual _rehab_  and end up an inpatient for even longer than planned? Her eyes sting at the thought.

Oliver kisses her knuckles, and when she looks over at him, his smile is patient and kind. “You clearly needed it, Felicity.”

She blinks. “All they had me do was walk up and down the hallway a little,” she points out. But she doesn’t mention how hard it was, how the effort of moving her body had caused her torso to ache so badly she’d been crying for most of her session. She doesn’t mention the way her muscles had protested, shaking even with the assistance of a walker. A _walker,_ for God’s sake. “And weights,” she adds, slipping her free arm from beneath the covers to flex. “Gonna have biceps to rival yours,” she teases.

Oliver presses his mouth to her wrist again, his eyes closing, and she can recognize the guilt emanating from him. From what they’ve told her, she spent most of the first four days in the hospital unconscious or, at best, semi-conscious. She lost muscle tone fast, particularly her legs, since moving anything other than her arms still triggers aches and pulls and _pain_  in her abdomen.

None of which is Oliver’s fault.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” she chastizes, her voice stronger now that she’s been awake a few minutes. “I’m going to be fine, Oliver. Good as new.” Her smile is a little forced, because she can’t help thinking about the large swathes of bandages beneath her hospital gown. “Well,” she adds, “I mean, I’m sure there are scars, even if I’ve carefully avoided _looking_  directly–-”

“Felicity,” he interrupts, “you are beautiful, body and soul. Your scars are badges of honor.” The earnestness in his gaze –- she’s overwhelmed, unable to respond with anything other than a distinctly whimper-ish noise. Oliver shifts, rising out of the visitor’s chair to sit beside her hip in the bed. Bracing his free hand beside her shoulder, he leans closer to kiss her softly. “I mean it,” he says. “I love you.”

She lifts her free hand, cursing the stupid weakness in her stupid muscles when her arm actually _shakes_  with the exertion, and tugs him closer. “I love you,” she answers, kissing him again. 

“Are you hungry?” he whispers, holding his face inches from hers. “You slept through dinner, but I think I saw pudding on the tray –- that’s probably still good.”

“Oooh,” she brightens, nodding.

Oliver, who’s taken over a lot of what the nurses had been doing now that she doesn’t have IVs or catheters anymore, works the bed controls until she’s sitting mostly upright. She can certainly sit up on her own, but it  _hurts_  a lot and this way is easier on her body and Oliver’s nerves. She’s hungrier than she realized, and finishes the small serving of pudding quickly. 

“I’d offer to get you something else,” Oliver says, worry lines prominent across his forehead, “but I don’t think much will be open.”

She tries to read his watch upside down. “Because it’s so late,” she surmises. She does _not_  add that she’ll live, as Oliver does not take joking remarks about her living or dying well at all these days. And Felicity does not take the devastated look on his face when he thinks about her _dying_ well at all. So it’s best to just avoid the topic when possible.

“Well, that,” Oliver answers with a small grin, amusement warming his tone, “and it’s after midnight, which means it’s technically Christmas.”

Felicity’s mouth drops open. She’d been shot on December 9th, and although the days just following are lost to her, she kind of vaguely remembers the last day of Hannukah –- her mom had given her a manicure, despite the nurse’s admonitions, and Oliver’d brought her bright pink hospital socks. She thinks the real gift of that day was being transferred from ICU to a regular room and having her meds adjusted so that she was actually mostly _aware_ of people visiting. But she swears that was just a couple blurry, hospital days ago –- how is it already Christmas?

Oliver’s smile widens, and it’s only _barely_  shadowed by his worry for her. “Felicity?” he prompts. 

When she manages a distracted, “Yeah?” he kisses her again. It’s hard to stay focused on things like _logistics_  and _the passage of time_  when Oliver’s kissing her, so it only takes a moment for her to stop obsessing over how many days and hours she’s lost since the shooting. She’s present for _this_  moment, and she’s going to savor it.

“Thank you,” he murmurs against her lips.

She frowns. “What? Oliver, for what?” 

“My gift,” he answers immediately, leaning his forehead against hers. “ _You_.”

Her grip on his hand tightens. “Oliver...” She’s overwhelmed again, swallowing hard against the lump in her throat. Felicity’s emotions have always been pretty close to the surface, but the stress and pain and medicinal overload in her system the last couple weeks has left her feeling emotionally unstable. She has to take a moment –- eyes closed, breathing slow and measured –- before she even tries to speak. “This isn’t how I wanted to spend our first holiday season together,” she confesses. 

Her recovery is mostly full of pain and incremental progress and gratitude to be alive, but there’s _definitely_  anger underneath it all. Anger that Darhk tried to take her life from her; anger that he tried to ruin them; anger that this had to happen to her, because despite how quickly Oliver bounces back from devastating injuries, recovery _hurts_  and moves _slowly_ , and Felicity is not a patient person. Or particularly good with pain. So. She kind of hates everything about this; the fact that her injuries kept her from celebrating with her fiance is just–- 

“Hey,” Oliver interrupts her mini-spiral. When she blinks up at him, those kind blue eyes are focused entirely on her, and his brow is furrowed just slightly. “Where’d you just go?”

She glances down at their hands, intertwined on the light blue hospital blanket covering her lap. “I’m sorry I didn’t get you a gift.” She’d bought him eight relatively silly gifts for Hannukah, though she'd only given him three before the shooting. But when she’d mentioned that to him right around the time of her transfer to the rehab hospital, urging him to stop by Palmer Tech to pick up the rest of his gifts, he'd scoffed, promising they’d exchange gifts when she came home. Now, knowing she hadn’t even  _thought_  about what to get her boyfriend –-  _fiance_  -– for their first Christmas as a couple, when she _knows_ how much this holiday means to him; knowing she hadn't been able to actually _get_  him a gift, nor _will_ she be able to any time in the near future... 

She angrily swipes a tear from her cheek, just before Oliver’s fingers gently graze along her jaw to tilt her face up.

“ _Felicity_.”

She stares at him, a little stunned, as the exasperation in his tone is the first time since she woke up from the second surgery that he’s expressed anything other than support and love and patience. 

His big hand tightens around hers and he holds her gaze. “You’re alive,” he says slowly. “That’s all I’ll ever need.”

She stops breathing for a long moment, then she’s moving -– wincing through the stab of pain to sit all the way up and throw her arms around his neck, hauling him closer. 

“Felicity–-”

“No,” she interrupts. “Come here.”

He’s still holding himself carefully, mindful of her injuries, but at her admonition, he lets himself wrap his arms around her to cradle her closer.

She turns her face into his neck and hums in contentment. Her abdomen is protesting and she’s breathing too heavily because there’s a bit of a stabbing kind of pain below her ribs, but she _doesn’t care._ She needs Oliver’s arms around her the way they haven’t really been able to embrace since she's been in the hospital. 

Oliver holds her securely, gently, rocking them just the slightest bit from side to side until her grip loosens and her arms start to shake again. “Okay?” he whispers against her temple.

She nods, pressing several kisses to his stubble before she starts to ease back onto the mattress. Oliver assists, then slides his arms from around her. He stays leaning close, smiling down at her. “Pain meds?” he asks.

Felicity knows they’ll drag her back under, but she also knows letting the pain get ahead of the meds is a _really_  bad idea. So she nods, watching Oliver as he leans over, grabbing the multipurpose remote and pressing the call button for her. 

The nurses arrive so quickly, she wonders if they weren’t on their way anyway. She usually has her pain meds around 10, which means she’s taking them late. She swallows the pills and lays back down, holding Oliver’s hand as she waits for the haziness to kick in.

“Oliver?” she says, and the drowsiness in her voice is their first hint that she’ll be asleep soon.

“Yeah?” he asks, rubbing his thumb along the back of her hand.

“’T’s all I’ll ever need, too,” she tells him, having a little trouble with the words. Stupid drugs.

Oliver is up and leaning over her, his smile radiant as he beams down at her. “Yeah?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she answers, tilting her chin up. He obliges her with a kiss. A bit of a lingering kiss, actually, and she would be _really_  into it except the drugs are pulling her down into a dazy, drowsy state.

“Sleep,” he whispers, pressing a soft kiss to her temple.

She huffs a laugh at the feel of his stubble against her skin. “Think you got the vows all sorted,” she murmurs, unable to keep her eyes open anymore. Still, she turns her face towards where he’s sitting beside her.

“What?” he asks.

“Wha’ you said,” she explains, and the words are so clear in her mind but so slurred when she says them aloud. “Should be our vows. K?”

His fingers tighten around hers, and when he brings her hand up to kiss her knuckles again, she could swear she feels the dampness of tears on his cheeks. But he simply whispers, “Okay.”

END


End file.
